Making my very own Great Bustard #greatbustard

Today started my week devoted to the sculpture making part of my Masters Installation. I’ve been working on some measurements and have the finished workup ready to go. I have already been donated 5 sheets of polystyrene from a BA student who had finished all of his work and no longer needed the extra sheets he’d bought, but when Jim and I measured up, it struck me that the Bustard was looking absolutely massive and I had nowhere near enough poly to make the barrel chest of the bird. So I dashed off to B&Q to buy another 4 sheets, which I then dropped back at College, before going back home and revisiting my original measurements. Good job I did as I had the Bustard 1.2metres at it’s tallest when it’s only 105cm! The same information also had the body length at 115cm, but this was way too long. So with my new designs I returned into college for an afternoon of polystyrene sawing! First I marked out the biggest shape, that being the oval of the body which would be the biggest section, I would need to add on the head and the tail to fit in the pieces of poly I was working on…

In hindsight, maybe I should have put as much as possible onto the sheet, ie, moved the shape to the bottom to have more neck and tail and just finish with small top sections, but it’s cut now…

This is the first one cut, not too bad, the bread knife gives quite a good edge, makes it easy to follow the outline although it’s always going to be a bit messy with polystyrene!

So I just need to make 8 of those…

Cutting the polystyrene is quite hard work for my little arm and at one point I wasn’t quite sure I’d be able to get through 8 sheets, let alone all the other bits as well… It does take a considerable amount of time to cut the first 4, but then I find a little work groove and by the end I’m finishing them in 10 minutes a sheet.

So I have my 8 body sections and from the left over pieces of sheet I need to make best use of size to fit the tail and the head within the remaining poly.

A little bit of maths later and I’m marking out the head outline.

I only need 4 sheets of this as the head/neck isn’t as wide as the body (about half – 20cm max)

I’m racing against time to get these 4 cut out as I need to get them glued before they close the workshop…

Fortunately Jim helps me sandwich all the layers together and glues them with some strong wood glue and a few cocktail sticks for extra holding whilst they set.

8 bodies, 4 heads, done.

Jim checks out the right kind of rasp on a side section, so that I can immediately start when I get in tomorrow… But first I’ll need to cut 6 tail sections and get them gluing and then I can start sculpting.

It really is going to be massive, the sculpture will stand just over a metre tall and is nearly a metre in length at it’s widest point (crop to tail), I can’t wait to get the sections together, this will (hopefully) be impressive… and it gives me a nice big surface to project onto 🙂